1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display and a driving method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A Plasma Display Panel (PDP) is a flat panel display that uses a plasma generated by a gas discharge to display characters or images. It includes, depending on its size, more than several scores to millions of pixels arranged in a matrix pattern.
In the plasma display, one frame is divided into a plurality of subfields, each having a weight value, and a grayscale is embodied by performing time-divisional control of the subfields. Each subfield includes a reset period, an address period, and a sustain period. The reset period is a period of initializing a state of each cell so as to smoothly perform an address operation in a cell, and the address period is a period of selecting a cell among a plurality of cells to emit light through an address discharge. In addition, the sustain period is a period of performing a sustain discharge in a cell to emit light.
In a method for expressing grayscales in the plasma display, an address operation is sequentially performed from a first scan electrode line to a last scan electrode line during the address period. Then, a sustain discharge operation is simultaneously performed for all cells during the sustain period. According to the above driving method, since the address operation of the cell corresponding to the scan electrode in which the address operation is performed at a former half period is performed after the address period is performed in the cell at a latter half period, wall charges formed after the reset period may flow to a discharge space. Accordingly, the address operation is unstably performed toward the last scan electrode line, and therefore a low discharge may be generated when performing the sustain discharge. Particularly, when the temperature of the PDP is high or a weight value of a previous subfield is higher, the low discharge may be well generated since there are many priming particles in the discharge space of the PDP.